The Family Dinner

Hanna Wildow – The Family Dinner
21.04.17 – 13.05.17
Opening: April 21 17.00-21.00 - performances 19.00
Dinner performances: May 5 and May 6, 18.00 – 21.00
Finissage May 13, 17.00-20.00, performances 19.00

hangmenProjects proudly presents The Family Dinner by Hanna Wildow, in collaboration with PWR, Moa Sjöstedt, Imri Sandström, Sara Teleman, Ellen Nyman, Moa Franzén, Anna-Karin Linder Krauklis, Katarina Bonnevier, Thérèse Kristiansson, Francine Agbodjalou, Karin Drake and Carolina Johansson Oviedo. With traces of Virginia Woolf, Claude Cahun, Emily Dickinson, Klara Johansson, Letebrehan Haile, Sara Lidman, Siri von Essen, Tove Jansson, Marie Høeg, Yaa Asantewaa, and Lisa Simpson.

In The Family Dinner, Wildow invites 13 other artists to collectively reflect upon, reshape and perform a fictive archive. Together, they intertwine stories that transgress time and space in the digital work www.thefamilydinner.se. The work is shown for the first time at hangmenProjects, together with spatial extensions.
The exhibition retells a six-hour performance that took place behind closed doors in September 2015. For this occasion the invited artists had chosen historical or contemporary female figures to embody. Preceding the performance, each artist individually processed layered stories generated by their characters, which were then articulated, embodied and documented throughout the evening. Using the methodology of live action role play (LARP), the participants searched for interstices in the shared stories, the layered documents, the words researched, reimagined or culled from the imagination. The evening generated a collaborative collective performance through which historical narratives could be displaced, ingresses investigated, parentheses filled in. The task was clear and extensive: When history itself has eradicated our stories, we must begin to write them ourselves.
The visitor to The Family Dinner is invited into a psychic and spatial continuation: a fragmented dialogue that replays the dialogues of the participants and their characters. Narratives unfold, tales repeatedly inquiring the very becoming of narrations: What happens to history when a true story does not exist? When the book has neither beginning nor an end? When deception takes and gives an other’s voice?
The exhibition also presents a series of performances and dinner parties – enactments that once again unravel and entangle, slip and spill, break and become. For the full program and registration, see above.

Hanna Wildow, born 1983, lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. In her artistic practice, she explores language, body and spatiality. With a desire for interspaces, breakages and gaps; she searches for warped spaces and errant narratives. Her interdisciplinary works explore performative inquiries; text, sound, printed matters, video and performances that often overlap in spatial installations. She inducts intimate forms of collaboration and collective practices, through which she challenges boundaries and borders. Wildow got her MFA from Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design in 2015. Since then, her work has taken place in Stockholm University of Dance and Circus, ccap Stockholm, ArkDes Stockholm, Participant Inc. New York, London Biennale MANILA Pollination, Charles James Gallery Los Angeles and Human Resources Los Angeles. Hanna Wildow also works as a language introduction teacher to newly arrived refugee youths in Botkyrka, Stockholm.
Anna-Karin Linder Krauklis (b. 1981) is a larper, larp writer and a game designer. She lives and works in Stockholm.
Ellen Nyman (b. 1971) is an actress based in Stockholm. She was trained at Skuespillerskolen in Århus, Denmark in 1993 – 1997, and has since worked primarily within theatre, film, TV and performance and has performed in about 30 plays and performances in Sweden and Denmark.
Francine Agbodjalou is the future. Francine Agbodjalou is your biggest pipe dream. Francine Agbodjalou is actor, performer and artist. She is based in Stockholm yet practices internationally. She is currently a student of Fine Art at the Royal Art Academy in Stockholm.
Imri Sandström (b. 1980) is a Malmö based artist. She received her MFA from Umeå Academy of Fine Art (2008), and she holds an additional Master in Sound Art from Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts (2010).
Karin Drake, (b. 1981), is a Swedish animator based in Stockholm. Graduated from Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2015 with a previous bachelor in gender and film studies from Stockholm University.
Dr. Katarina Bonnevier is an architect, artist and researcher at Swedish Architecture and Design Center. She is a visiting professor at University College of Arts Craft and Design (2009-14), was a lecturer and researcher at School of Architecture (KTH), Stockholm (2001-2011), and visiting professor at Haute Ecole Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale (2010).
Moa Franzén (b. 1985) is an artist and poet based in Stockholm. Franzén holds an MA in choreography from New Performative Practices at the University of Dance and Circus.
Moa Sjöstedt (b. 1986) is a designer and visual artist originally from Göteborg but currently based in Stockholm, Sweden. She has a Bachelor of Art and Design from Beckmans College of Design.
Sara Teleman (b. 1972) works as an illustrator and writer/journalist specialized in graphic design and illustration, and is based in Stockholm. She graduated with a MFA from Konstfack in 1998.
Thérèse Kristiansson is an artist and architect, member of the art and architecture group MYCKET together with Mariana Alves and Katarina Bonnevier, and Die bösen Mösen together with photographer Hannah Goldstein.